Injury prevention, performance and return to sport: How can science help?

The margins in elite sport are becoming increasingly smaller particularly in timed sporting events forcing the limits of performance to be pushed further. Although traditionally only the physiological and physical attributes of performance were considered, there is growing awareness of a range of factors including but not limited to; the performance culture including the team environment, athlete coach relationship, facilities etc; specific physical attributes and skills for each sports; mental skills such as confidence, resilience, motivation etc; technical skills including agility, coordination; tactical skills and finally lifestyle skills including nutrition, well-being, and recovery. In sports medicine there is a growing need to understand the relationship between training load, injury, fitness and performance.1 For an individual an injury can be devastating, however if that individual is performing in a team the impact goes beyond the individual affecting the whole team. Since timed races are frequently decided by tenths and hundredths of a second, athlete's training loads are increasing and injury has the potential to become a probability rather than a risk. Rowing is a highly competitive and popular sport in the United Kingdom, although historically the injury rate was thought to be low compared to other sports, especially contact sports such as football,2,3 more recent findings have suggested that elite international rowers are at a higher risk of injury.4 Understanding injury in